Mobley’s emergence continues to be the story of this season for the Cavs.
The Cleveland Cavaliers won three of their four games this week. Their one loss came on the second night of a back-to-back where Evan Mobley was kept out of the second half with an ankle injury. Here’s what we learned from the 3-1 week.
Evan Mobley is shooting the ball
Mobley has had a breakout season fueled by his increased on-ball attacking and aggressiveness when he’s going against mismatches. Now, he’s starting to add the three-point shot into the mix.
The Cavs have long wanted Mobley to shoot more threes. We saw why this week as he canned five triples in the first quarter against the Charlotte Hornets en route to a 41-point game on just 23 shots.
It was noticeable how quickly and confidently Mobley was letting the three-ball fly against Charlotte. The hesitation we’ve seen in the past just simply wasn’t there.
Bigs are coming into the league now that are shooting the outside shot even when they don’t have that shot in their arsenal. It’s just where the game is going. Mobley has been the opposite. He hasn’t been willing to pull the trigger until he’s completely believed he was ready to do so.
The numbers show that Mobley is a good shooter. You don’t luck your way into shooting 40% from three and 79.6% from the line a quarter of the way through the season.
Jarrett Allen continues to struggle
The Cavs could’ve used a big second half from Allen once Mobley was ruled out of their game against the Miami Heat. They didn’t get that. He was a team-worst -12 and provided just four points and three rebounds in the final two quarters. When they needed him to step up and look like the player he was during their 18-2 run in the middle of last season, Allen wasn’t able to do so.
This wasn’t an isolated incident. Allen hasn’t been assertive for the last week and a half. He’s averaging just 8.3 points on 5.8 shot attempts in their last six games. That’s good for the sixth-most points and the eighth-most shot attempts on the team during that stretch. He also only scored over 20 points once since their Nov. 19 showing against the Boston Celtics.
Simply put, the Cavs need more from the fourth member of their core four.
Donovan Mitchell is providing the Cavs with exactly what they need
It’s easy to overlook Mitchell’s impact this season. The numbers are still good and he’s going to be an easy All-Star selection again, but he isn’t the only one driving wins as has been the case at various points during his previous two years in Cleveland. That’s by design.
“There’s accepting of being a leader, but also understanding [I need to be] picking my spots,” Mitchell said after Tuesday’s game. “It’s something [me and Kenny Atkinson] talked about in LA when we first talked about everything. It’s not hard to buy into something when you have a guy that’s on a consistent basis teaching and going over and over and over again and also holding you accountable. … For me, it’s just finding ways to become the best player I can be.”
That has been seen in Mitchell’s last five games. The Cavs needed a spark against the Celtics last Sunday and Mitchell provided it by scoring 20 fourth-quarter points. He closed out the Washington Wizards after Darius Garland left the game with a head injury. On Thursday against the Nuggets, he attacked Denver’s defense that was collapsing too much to the paint by constantly taking threes as he went 6-10 in the easy victory. On Saturday, he saw that Mobley had it going early and forcefed him early as he assisted on six of Mobley’s makes. Even Sunday he tried to light a fire under the Cavs and take over at the end of the third quarter, he just wasn’t able to get shots to fall like he normally does.
There’s many reasons why the Cavs are winning as they are. Atkinson’s impact, Mobley’s emergence, and Garland’s resurgence all play a part in Cleveland’s impressive start. But those things don’t necessarily happen if there first isn’t a buy-in and willingness from Mitchell to put the team above any individual goals he might have.
The defense is starting to come around
The defense has gone from an asset to a liability at times this season. That has been seen most clearly in their four losses where they struggled to defend the three-point line. Their defense has been slowly turning around even though there were some rough stretches like the third quarter against Miami.
The Cavs have registered the third-best defensive rating since the start of December (105.5). That is mostly to do with opponents not shooting as well from three against them. In that span, other teams have only connected on 30.9% of their outside looks.
It’s always difficult to assign blame or credit for an opponent’s three-point shooting. Good offense beats good defense. Likewise, there’s nothing better for a defense than an offense just missing wide-open threes. While there could be some better luck involved in the defense’s turnaround, the win over the Nuggets shows that the process is much better.
The Cavs held the Nuggets to just 24 three-point attempts. They did this by allowing Allen to take on the Nikola Jokic assignment and sending doubles only when necessary. And when they did send help, the defense did a good job of rotating so that they weren’t giving up looks from beyond the arc.
Earlier this season, a team like the Nuggets would’ve caused the Cavs problems. The rotations and unnecessarily shrinking the floor would’ve allowed Denver’s shooters to get going while not being enough to keep Jokic from getting his. Instead, they took away the three-ball and mostly forced Jokic to beat them on his own. That’s something you’re willing to live with if you have an offense as potent as the Cavs.